Courses+Fall+2017

__**1000 LEVEL COURSES** __  **Nature & Society** – 4 credits (IHSS 1110) Akera / Costelloe-Kuehn T 2 – 3:50 pm, F 2-3:50 (SUST) Nature/Society is the core seminar for the Vasudha (Sustainability) Living & Learning Community where you are introduced to a social understandingof sustainability. Our focus will be on knowledge, understanding, and critical thinking about human beings and our relationship to the environment. Service learning and other experiential learning strategies will be important elements of this course. Our goal is to cultivate a humanistic, social scientific, and ethnographic understanding of the underlying challenges of sustainability that results from human behavior and our place in the natural world. The course is reserved for members of the Vasudha Living & Learning community, and other students with a genuine interest in sustainability, with the permission of instructor.

**Human Rights in History** -- 4 credits (IHSS xxx) Sohasky MR 10-11:50 This course explores the historical development of modern international human rights through the lens of American foreign policy. Through lecture and discussion, this course will guide students in critical analysis of the narratives and national myths surrounding human rights in the history of the United States and the world. Major themes include the origins of human rights, human rights abuses, the human rights regime, human rights institutions, and problems of enforcement. Freshmen only.

**Open Source Art, Music and Culture** -- 4 credits (IHSS 1965) Malazita M 4-5:50, W 12-1:50 or 2-3:50 The concept of “Open Source,” once exclusively linked to a certain kind of politically and economically engaged set of software production, has experienced a period of growth and transformation in the 21st Century. “Open Source” projects can now be found in disciplines and activities ranging as wide as computer science, hardware development, artistic practice, design, bio hacking, and social justice work, as well as in artistic and technological experimentations in LGBTQ and racially intersectional communities. Though “Open Source” practices across all these domains vary wildly, a common thread that runs through all these groups is the commitment to collaboration and to distributed “making” tools. Through a hybrid of readings, discussions, and collaborative papers and art projects, this class will explore the dynamics and politics of Open Source knowledge, collaboration, and distributed technical and artistic production. Freshmen only.

**Religion in a Global World** -- 4 credit (IHSS 1967) Royer MR 4-5:50 This course explores the role of religion and ritual in the everyday lives of people around the world. It will introduce students to key concepts, themes, and debates in social science and their relevance to present-day issues. We will read classic texts and recent ethnographic reports relating to very different types of societies, from traditional non-western cultures to modern American culture. Freshmen only.

**Global Health Challenges** -- 4 credit (IHSSxx) Cook MR 4-5:50 This course explores current and emerging global health problems and possible solutions. We will compare problems in low, middle and high income countries, examining different health challenges (associated with malaria and child birth, for example), ethnomedical practices, medical ethics, and ways environmental problems impact human health. Freshmen only.

**Design as Global Challenge** -- 4 credit (IHSS xxx) Nieusma TF 10-11:50 (SUST) Freshmen only.

**PDI Studio I** - 4 credits (IHSS 1610) Costelloe-Kuehn MR 2 - 4:50 pm The first design studio in the Product Design and Innovation Program introduces students to general design through a series of short projects. The projects stress creative thinking and invention, observation and perception, communication and visualization, sketching, photography, model-making, and especially open-ended exploration.

**Science, Technology & Society** - 4 credits (STSH/STSS 1110) Breyman TF 2 - 3:50 pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This class introduces students to Science and Technology Studies (STS), a multidisciplinary field that examines how politics, society and culture affect scientific research and technological innovation, and how research and innovation affect politics, society, and culture. Students are encouraged to apply what they learn to their own area of study and specialization. The course improves oral and written communication, and offers opportunities for discussion-based learning where intensive reading, writing, presenting, and group collaboration are taken seriously.

__**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">2000 LEVEL COURSES **__ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**PDI Studio III** 4 credits (IHSS 2610) Nieusma TF 2 - 4:50 pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The third design studio in the Product Design and Innovation Program focuses on an enriched sense of problem definition through an emphasis on the reach and interconnectedness of technology, and the conditionality of design selection criteria. Its design exercises, readings, and discussion press beyond marginal substitutions toward a broadened sense of possibility from, for example, “hypercars” and human-powered homes to small-scale local agriculture and extreme ecological living systems. This is a communication-intensivecourse.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**American Politics & Society in Crisis** - 4 credits (STSS 2962) Breymen TF 10 – 11:50 pm (SUST) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course analyzes the workings of major institutions in American society and politics during a <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">period in which key parts of our society seem dysfunctional, having lost their integrity and ability to solve problems. Through a careful reading of texts in political science and social criticism we discuss symptoms, causes and possible remedies.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**American History** -- 4 credits Sohasky TF 12-1:50pm (SUST) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course surveys the history of the United States from the colonial era through the present. The course introduces major themes and tensions in United States politics, society, and culture. Topics will include encounters between American Indians and colonial peoples, independence, the formation of the American government, slavery, immigration, citizenship, rights, social movements, colonialism, war, and the changing identity of the United States in the world.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Medicine and Society** -- 4 credits (STSH/S 2960) Cook MR 12-1:50 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course explores the social dimensions of health and medicine, examining factors shaping disease, access to health care, and therapeutic choices. It also explores the different stakeholders in health (doctors, nurses, patients, parents) and their interaction.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Society by Numbers** -- 4 credits (STSS) Cook (SUST) TF 2-3:50 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course studies global and national population trends with an emphasis on how population growth and decline affects migration, urbanization, economic development, sustainable development, environmental degradation, food scarcity, and political conflict.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**PDI Studio V** -- 4 credits (STSH 4610) Eglash MR 9 - 11:50 am <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The fifth design studio in the Product Design and Innovation Program introduces students to Human Centered Design, Participatory Design, and similar approaches that draw on ethnographic techniques and other user-centered methods. With a focus on information technology, we will work with one community group throughout the semester, collaborating in an iterative process that culminates in real-world trials and assessment of our co-designed products.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">4000 LEVEL COURSES **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**STS Research Design** -- 4 credits (STSS 4969) Kinchy MR 10-11:50 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This is the first part of a two-semester senior project sequence for majors in STS Sustainability Studies and Science and Technology Studies. Students who successfully complete this course will be able to identify and investigate important research topics, construct theoretically-informed research questions, select research methods that are appropriate to their questions, review the relevant research literature, and compose compelling research proposals. Students will practice methods of locating, generating, managing, and analyzing diverse forms of data, as relevant to their senior projects. The course also addresses research ethics and the practical challenges of carrying out a research project.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Politics of Design** -- 4 cr (STSS 4350) Winner MR 2-3:50pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The class explores political dimensions of design choices in technological systems, architecture, digital devices, and social institutions. We study issues of freedom, power, authority, justice, and community as addressed -- for better or worse -- in the built form of useful artifacts found in both historical and contemporary settings.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Topics in Economic Policy** -- 4 credits (STSS 4966) Gowdy MR 10-11:50 (SUST) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The purpose of this course is to apply economics, broadly defined, to an examination of current events and crises. The course will examine differing economic viewpoints and the theoretical frameworks that underlie various policy positions. Topics covered are health care, inequality, sustainability and the Anthropocene, globalization and modernization, and economic development. As we move through the course we will look for connections among these issues and the underlying economic drivers of the many crises the modern world is facing at this juncture in human history.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**International Economics and Globalization** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15.6px;">STSS 4966 -- 4 credits <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Duchin MR 10-11:50 (SUST) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course provides a broad perspective on the critical issues surrounding economic globalization in terms of a number of specific, interrelated topics: the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-2008, international trade and financial flows, technological innovation and intellectual property, the roles of national governments and transnational corporations, access to natural resources and environmental challenges, what is happening in selected industries and selected countries, and social and demographic changes. We examine the roles of major inter-governmental organizations such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. Throughout the course we consider the economic, social, and environmental challenges associated with globalization -- namely poverty and development, resource depletion and pollution -- and what can be done about them. You are no doubt familiar with many parts of this picture; in this course we relate them to the current events you will find in the news and assemble the parts into an integrated whole. We identify some of the major controversies regarding globalization and use an evidence-based approach to evaluate alternative views about them.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Economy, Technology, and Sustainability** -- 4 credits <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 15.6px;">STSS 4967 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Duchin MR 2-3:50 (SUST) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course is about critical challenges to sustainable economic development on local to global scales and focuses on ways of addressing them. We examine options surrounding water, food, materials and energy, technological alternatives, consumption behavior, public policy, and civil society institutions. Each student will conduct independent research on a subject area of his or her choosing, report progress on it in an oral presentation, and write up the study as a term paper.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Gender In Culture** – 1 credit (STSS 4963) K Fortun T 6:30 – 9:30 pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course revolves around documentary films that examine diverse gender issues in settings around the world. Following film screenings, facilitated discussion will encourage critical perspective and

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Gender in History** -- 4 cr (STSH 4960/STSS 4962) Costelloe-Kuehn T 6:30 – 9:30 pm + W 12-12:50 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course is designed to compliment Gender in Culture, a one credit film-based course (that students will be auto-enrolled in) exploring how gender and culture intersect in settings around the world. Gender in History will provide an opportunity to dive deeper into the topics covered by the films, discussing resonant readings and conducting original research. Researchers, activists and other members of the community will join the class as guest discussants.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**21st Century Risks, Robotics, Nanotech, Cloning, and Other Tech** - 4 credits (STSS 4330) Woodhouse MR 2 - 3:50 pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course covers two main types of technological risk: (1) innovating in ways that endanger health, quality of life, environment, or other goals; and (2) failing to pursue innovations that people need. Some understanding of the technical details is a prerequisite for making sense of emerging technologies, but the course focuses more on media, public opinion, political decision making, technologists’ incentives, and other social issues. This is a communication-intensive course. Prerequisite STSS/H 1110 or permission of instructor.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Futurism: Utopias and Dystopias** – 4 credits (STSS 4965) Woodhouse TF 2 – 3:50 pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Fiction-based, including sci fi, but also social and scientific scenarios on future work/leisure, radical abundance via nanotechnology, virtual realities, real democracy, transhumanism, space colonization. Classroom: Discussion, videos, oral presentations – not lecture. Major research project of student’s choice. Considerable reading.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Digital Design in History** - (STSS 4972) Malazita TF 10-11:50 am <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This course will trace the history of digital media, design, and art from the 18th to the 21st century, focusing not only on the development of new technologies and design practices, but also on the philosophical and cultural shifts about knowledge, art, and design that occur through and with digital and electronic technology. Through a combination of readings and hands-on interactions with digital design tools, students will think through how the social and technical qualities of digital design tools influence the ways in which we construct and create art, technology, and knowledge.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**DIS Senior Project** – 4 credits (STSH /STSS 4980) Malazita W 2:30 – 6:20 pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This class is designed to support the development of STS senior thesis projects. Independent research supervised by a faculty member, culminating in a written thesis. A creative endeavor such as a videotape or computer program may be substituted with departmental permission. This is a communication-intensive course. Restricted to STSO, SUST, and DIS majors with senior standing.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Social Movements** - 4 credits (STSS 4964) Mascarenhas TF 2:00 - 3:50pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">This interdisciplinary seminar links #blacklivesmatter” movements with populist nationalism movements. We will examine these movement within four broad phenomena: 1) the rise of the U.S. prison industrial complex and its relationship to the increasing militarization of inner city communities 2) the role of the media industry in influencing national conversations about race and racism and 3) the state of racial justice activism in the context of a neoliberal Obama Presidency and 4) the increasingly populist nature of anti-Muslim and nationalism movements in the contemporary United States and Europe.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Archive Politics** – 4 cr (STS 4XXX0 Sohasky MR 4-5:50pm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">How do nations choose what information to preserve and protect, and what are the mechanisms by which nations conceal or forget? This discussion-based course will interrogate the politics of archives, museums, memorials, and other repositories of national memory. Topics include the history of collecting, the preservation and destruction of electronic data and materials, collective and national memory, barriers to access of information, the protection of information, and information in the digital age.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">GRADUATE COURSES **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Contemporary Social Theory** (Mascarenhas) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Social theory is often regarded as a broad framework for organizing and ordering research, or as a specific orientation which leads the researcher to well-known problems and issues. Consequently, there is relatively little agreement as to what social theory is or what it might achieve. Recent developments in feminism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory, for example, have only confounded much of the existing confusion and uncertainty. Some have suggested that we have never been modern while others claim there is no such thing as society. This course provides an introduction to contemporary social theory. We begin with Taylorism and Progressivism, discuss hegemony and Fordism, and frame notions of modernity. We examine the processes of commodification, embeddedness and forms of capital, and the social constructions of race, space, and politics. We end with feminism, postcolonialism, critical race theory.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**Technology Studies** (Winner) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The seminar examines interactions between technology and society from the vantage point of the various disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives that have contributed to technology studies. The texts, theories, and arguments that were important for the historical development of the field are covered, as well as contemporary issues. The seminar provides the resources and develops the skill needed for understanding, criticizing, constructing, and developing research in the field.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**STS METHODS SURVEY** (Kinchy) <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">What methods do researchers use to investigate the social shaping of technology, the dynamics of scientific controversies, the production of facts, public perceptions of experts, or inequalities in science and engineering professions? This course introduces students to common research practices in Science and Technology Studies, which include a wide range of data collection methods, research design strategies, and approaches to data analysis. Readings and discussions will survey the approaches, methods, and tools that STS scholars frequently use, with an emphasis on “theory-methods packages”—the idea that research methods are grounded in conceptual frameworks, and vice versa. Students will practice methods of interviewing, participant observation, archival research, and case study comparison. Students will also write a paper comparing two methodological approaches, in order to deepen their understanding of how research methods inform and are informed by theory.